7-Eleven is the worlds largest operator, franchiser and licensor of convenience stores. In 2009, 7-Eleven entered the Indonesian market, which it saw as a potentially lucrative opportunity. 7-Eleven branches in Indonesia offer local dishes and snacks alongside its signature fast food and drinks. By providing free wireless hotspots, outside seating and thumping techno music, the stores have become a trendy hangout for young urbanites.

7-Elevens original business analytics system was built around pre-defined templates that restricted point-of-sale data analysis and were not capable of generating real-time insights for informed decision making. After a comprehensive assessment, 7-Eleven recognized that the Splunk platform was its best option in terms of flexibility, cost-effectiveness and the ability to integrate external data. For example, by integrating with Yahoo! Weather, 7-Eleven can accurately forecast the market demand of different products according to the predicted weather.

Data analysis and reporting is now seamless, with the processing cycle reduced from days to minutes. It results in improved time-to-market for new campaigns and services, and of course faster profits in less time. Using the operational insights generated from Splunk it only takes the company two weeks to prepare the launch of a new campaignan 80 percent reduction compared to the previous system. Splunk real-time analysis enables 7-Eleven to rapidly evaluate the success of each campaign.

Question 1(A): Identify two different business objectives that 7-Eleven is achieving by leveraging Splunk big data analytics system.